I LOVE THIS FILM!
OK, sorry, I'm better now ;-)
It's one of these rare films when everything just clicked together and worked out perfectly. Also it's one of the most Australian films around in its themes, portrayal of mateship and dignity of opressed men, and the colourful vivid language.
Here is the synopsis:
GETTIN' SQUARE is about startin' over, keepin' clean and goin' straight. Barry Wirth is fresh out of prison and determined to stay on the straight and narrow. But like his mate Johnny "Spit" Spitieri and reformed gangster turned restaurateur Dabba, he finds out the hard way that there are old scores and a few new ones that'll make gettin' square a lot harder than he thought.
And here is what Paul Byrnes - the curator over at Australian Screen - has to say:
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Curator’s notes
Gettin’ Square was written by a Gold Coast criminal lawyer, Chris Nyst, which explains the film’s strong sense of authenticity. It’s primarily a comedy in the well-established style of the London criminal comedy caper, but the Gold Coast setting adds an ironic flavour – palm trees, bikini car washes, and lots of people with expensive clothes and no taste. Beneath the verbal humour, some of which has a strongly Australian flavour, there’s a deep sympathy for the characters, particularly the powerless ones like Barry (Sam Worthington) and his prison mate Johnny ‘Spit’ Spitieri (David Wenham).
David Wenham’s performance as Spit makes the movie, both as comedy and as social observation. His courtroom bamboozling of the lawyers and bureaucrats is one of the highlights of Wenham’s already distinguished career – a comic tour-de-force in which he cons two lawyers out of $40, tells them nothing, and gets away with it. They never even realise they’ve been had. But Johnny is more than simply a comic character. He’s the best evidence of the complete failure of the system. No one offers him help at any stage; no one except his mate Barry even cares what happens to him. He’s ‘just a junkie’, and his only value to the police and the lawyers is in his possible testimony against the bigger fish.
The film doesn’t distinguish between the cops and the villains – they’re all villains, one way or the other. In fact, the only characters with any sense of honour and fair play are Dabba, the ex-criminal trying to go straight, Barry the ex-criminal who wants to be a chef, and Johnny Spitieri, a man so beaten down by heroin and prison that he retains a childlike innocence. This was the second feature of Jonathan Teplitzky, after Better Than Sex (2000). David Wenham starred in both films. For Gettin’ Square, Wenham won the AFI Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
If it was an American film, David Wenham would have been nominated for an Oscar - he is that good in it! He is a chameleonic actor: Faramir from The Lord of the Rings and Spit couldn't have been any more different, but he is equally authentic as both characters.
Also starring are some esteemed Aussie actors who you already have seen in other films in our Film Club:
- Richard Carter (boys' dad in Bootmen, police officer in The Rabbit Proof Fence)
- David Field (gangster Acko in Two Hands)
British actor Timothy Spall (Secrets and Lies, Harry Potter + voice artist in Chicken Run and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland) plays the pivotal role of Darren "Dabba" Barrington.
The soundtrack was written and performed by MGF (go to our "music box" if you don't remember them).
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